What I've Found Out

Spent the last three hours surfing the net inside an Internet café full of boisterous teens, groping at things and realities that appear to me to be difficult to unravel and understand. Though the hours seemed long, I was deprived only of the use of 45 pesos, unbelievably cheap for one used to the high costs of technology.

Sites visited were mostly along the lines of email lists and web blogs of assorted persuasion and orientation. Though quite unscientific and maybe even, illogical, I had wanted to spend the time toward finding out more about the things and realities that continually irritate me like a mote in one's eye during my moments of solitude.

Understandably, the blogs I went to provided no discernible relief except to inform me that many people, educated and quite learned, continue to exercise visceral hate and/or dislike for certain things, people, country, etc, to the point of allowing their rather creative minds to be closed to any attitude, suggestion, or even inkling, that might suggest that they need to rethink their ideas about those things. One gets the sense that to do so would be tantamount to admission of signs of weakness, inferiority, or even disrespect. In my estimation, they have thrown acceptable logic out of the window, and replaced it with their own reasoned-out worldviews and absolutes. Mind you, these are the same people who will extol and embellish to the high heavens the perceived virtues of spouses, members of the family, children, loved ones, or anybody close with which they share the same attitudes and biases. My doubts about them and what they might write extend to their abilities to be impartial with things that might also affect me. Thus, reading them requires a bit of caution and justifiable reservations.

Anyway, the three hours spent were in my estimation quite purposeful and fruitful, since I did find out or discover if you may, new enlightenment about things and relationships that I am inexorably attached to on a daily basis. Enlightenment which may not have direct relevance to the last paragraph.

False modesty aside, as one respected member of an email list intoned, my usual social interaction in the home city of my birth has been with people considered part of the upper strata of society. People educated in the best possible ways available and considered members of the affluent and/or influential elite in the city. The false modesty exclusion covers my insinuation that I, too, belonged to that sector. And I do since truly as far as I can recall, most everybody else around me, at home, in school, and in social gatherings, have invested me with membership to that group. Whether justified or not is beside the point.

I find then that this precisely has been an integral part of my problems, not because it was wrong to associate with the group but because this gave me a rather skewed reflection of realities, absent exposure and association with the other sectors. The local assumption was simply that this favored group not only was the un-appointed spokesperson to articulate the hues and cries of the entire city, or country, but that only this group could know, articulate, or reflect society in general. But reality dictates that such is not the case. The lower strata of society have as much claim to this primacy, and maybe even more since they definitely are more in numbers.

Almost to the man, members of the considered elite have been quite unanimous in their negative prognostications about the state of the country, and this is quite congruently reflected in the ways they live their lives. Almost without ambitions tied up with staying in the old country. Bogged down with deep inertia about what to do with their lives to help themselves and others. And I do not have to go far on this, since regrettably some of my own relatives can be counted. Where the inaction, or call it paralysis, has reached to a point, where almost a parasitic relationship exists between those who have or can with those who largely through their own volition do not have or can’t. Parasitic in the sense that not only a sense of victimization but also that of entitlement to unqualified assistance because things are bad, have pervaded many people's thinking. If one's interaction is limited to this sector, it is easy then to acquire the same sense of frustration and desperation about the way things are.

But my little realization whispers to me that such is not the same in the lower strata of society. In a real way, they are thinking of, are motivated with, and moved to action to, the realities facing them as inevitable challenges, some more difficult than others, that they have to meet head-on. If they have skills, regardless how menial or inconsequential they may seem, they know that using those skills will help alleviate their present dire conditions. Seeking employment using those skills will be one way to go for them.

Thus, you find them everywhere. Newspaper boys and other street hawkers, risking life and limb every moment of their day, to earn a few pesos. Carpenters, masons, even gardeners, laundry persons, and maids, networking with their friends so they can be connected with households or businesses in need. Agricultural workers working for 70 pesos for every 8-hour day to keep body and soul together. Contractual workers everywhere, easily distinguishable by their clean and well-ironed uniforms, littering all big malls, doing service for peanuts and gratefully pocketing small tips so long as not seen by their employers or given outside their places of business. And countless others, too tedious to mention or detail, who toil day in and day out for measly wages and equally meager benefits if any, to bring home to their anticipating families. All in all, their number is legion.

A good and relevant question to ask is how these intrepid groups are taking it. Have they as one collective group become surly, grouchy, criminally inclined, unscrupulous, mean, and impolite, cheating, suicidal, desperate, etc.? Surely, there will be those who may fit any or most of the descriptive adjectives used. But as a group, or as they interact with their "masters" on a regular basis?

My own personal observations after my stay so far would belie any negative behavioral connotations about this collective group.

I have not witnessed as much diligent practice of basic courtesies, respect, and even humor, as I have witnessed in this group. I would find it hard to imagine that all this is all made up, fake, belabored or a show. My own personal observations with people I have met and dealt with over the years would assist me to easily expose genuine behavior from one contrived. Quite recently, I was privy to one such incident where an unintended inadvertence in a very innocuous email one-liner, had confirmed for me that a proffered public demeanor was meant to convey something the sender was not.

This then is my little epiphany. And thus, I have good reasons to believe and hope for that as more individuals, unmindful and oblivious of what others might say, search for ways and commit sweat and energy to better themselves and the people around their immediate circles, this country can be turned around, from the grassroots up, and not the other way around.

Let's end with a cliché. Light that solitary candle in the midst of darkness. No need to aim for a big candle, a little one will do. Just make sure it's a candle intended to light the way, and not a self-promoting sparkler whose light lasts only momentarily and shines only on the giver.

From A Frequent Though Casual Observer: What's Being Blogged?

Many have addictively latched on to the idea of blogs and blogging because the underlying concept has snowballed across the globe into one indeterminable blob of written work splattered across the wide firmament of the web. From most accounts filed from extensive surveys, many continue to hitch up to this idea, adding something like a few thousand new blogging sites each minute (or is it every day? Who really knows. As a result the blog world has exponentially grown faster giving the vaunted and awesome Moore's law quite a run for its money in the area of phenomenal growth.

It is the current rage and most everybody with some exposure to information technology, big and small, important or unimportant, have deigned it proper and "cool" to be an active part of it. Free access and availability of sources and resources for putting together one's own blog creation have hastened and accelerated its growth.

To a point of satiation? Who knows. Where do we reach the point where the law of diminishing utility and/or value starts to kick in? Do we need a billion blog sites for us to be able to justifiably say we have sufficient divergent choices in the pool to get well-rounded views of the world, both of the physical and of that ether which exists in the minds of men? Who knows.

Suffice it say that at this point in time, blogs are an assorted coterie of writings ranging from the mundane to the sublime, from the real to the ethereal, from the most personal to the most public, from the well-prepared to the hasty unedited prose, etc., etc. Thus to reduce to as simple as simplicity can dictate, a blog is said to be nothing more than a personal journal of an author committed to updating his/her site regularly. Its very loose definition allows justification and comfort to most anybody maintaining and/or navigating through one's own created blog or one done professionally. It's pretty much like art, as many may adjudge it but not necessarily in the classical sense. What it is is pretty much dependent on the judgment of the beholder. And in this instance, the beholder is a rather liberal and accommodating judge, given to giving much latitude in its interpretation.

Thus, when one goes around the blog world, the dizzying swirl of divergent writings in equally divergent styles, format, orientation, purposes, etc., creates a mental labyrinth quite formidable to unravel and to make sense of in one's unending quest for understanding and wisdom.

Is there a common thread that allows it to be easily lent to some definition and categorization, so that one can readily understand and discern that one blog is similar to another, and/or to the million others already born or being birthed. If not similar, then at least that they all share the same methodology, rules, standards, etc., much like the other more classical bodies of human prose and/or verse. No doubt, we can search for them, navigate through them, or read through them, in one new common medium - the web or the Internet, two terms now quite interchangeable. But other than that, they are mostly a motley aggrupation of seemingly very dissimilar works.

Until such time that such issues are adequately threshed out and resolved, I have been pushed to decide to continue travelling through the thick world of the blogs, laden with all my stubborn doubts, nagging questions, unexplained confusion, etc., which irritate me to no end during my regular incursions.

I will thus continue reading avidly about political issues from across the globe, culled from all possible political orientation. Hard issues that affect a local country or those that impact on the entire globe. I will continue to encounter riveting treatises, written in most admirable fashion, logic and articulation; or those pretty much like pedestrian prose, complete with typos and simply, grammatical and/or syntax errors. This I do because I find this world most fascinating, most interesting, and most difficult to discern.

But I will also encounter those really personal journals, some vying to outdo the others in pushing the proverbial envelope; like narrating uninhibited sexual encounters, vivid descriptions of physical attributes both personal or those of loved ones. Details that traditionally or simply belong to one's innermost privacies. Or subjects considered taboos or anathema in polite conversation.

I will also occasionally indulge myself in reading from very narcissistic authors and/or commentaries, those who have found easy fora for self promotion, giving vent to their unbridled love of self and prodigiously extolling their perceived special gifts, whether in writing or in other fields. Some will frame their high-strung and erudite arguments or treatises with a plethora of high-brow references to acclaimed authors and their works, hoping to bring any recalcitrant reader into awe-full submission, if not to God-awful reverence for or admiration of their well-honed minds.

And again, suffice it to say that the blogosphere takes all kinds. Think about it, search for it, and you most undoubtedly will find it. Want movie reviews? You will be inundated with them ranging from fledgling critics (such as those who simply had the fortune of seeing the particular movie and others), to the avowed ones who earn their living doing them and either rightly or wrongly, are so recognized by society at large.

In fine, this simply is the current state of the blogosphere. Though it definitely continues to be a medium in a perpetual state of transition. Anyway, go play in it, and get exercised exhilarated, enlightened, or maybe even confused and dumbfounded. Remember, different strokes for different folks.

Just make sure to keep a cautious watch of your sanity. Or maybe check it at the door upon entering.